by Matt Hilton
‘If I let you go now, that will be it. I’ll never see you again.’
‘You can’t keep me here. This is false imprisonment, Jack. You can get in a lot of trouble for this.’ She softened along the jawline. ‘But not if you let me go. I won’t tell anyone what happened. I promise.’
I rocked my head on my shoulders, working on a kink in my neck. ‘See, that’s the problem, Sarah. I don’t believe you. You went behind my back and listened to the lies told to you by my worst enemies. How do you expect me to accept your word when you’d do that to me?’
She opened her hands, showing me her palms. ‘I told you what happened. Catriona got in touch because she thought that you’d listen to me. You haven’t been taking your medication and she thought you’d agree to go to your doctor if I asked you.’
‘I’ve been taking my meds,’ I told her. I lifted my aching knee and took a couple of pathetic little kicks. ‘Look. I’m working just fine.’
‘Not the medication for your knee, Jack,’ she said in a soft keen.
Not safe here.
Sarah’s attention flicked towards the TV. Had she heard Naomi’s warning?
Not safe here, essair-uh…
If it wasn’t bad enough that the living had conspired against me, now Naomi was putting thoughts in Sarah’s head. I lunged at the TV and sent it crashing to the floor. The screen didn’t explode dramatically but the picture immediately went off. Not the sound, though. It continued. Not safe. Not safe. Not safe. I scrabbled over the wreckage and yanked the power out of the socket. Finally the TV was silenced. Behind me, Sarah swerved past, heading for the door.
‘No,’ I screamed, going after her. Naomi left me. Catriona left me. ‘You’re not doing the fucking same!’
She reached the front door, slapped in desperation at the handle, but missed the bolts and snib. I was only a second behind her. My fingers sank into her curly hair and I hauled her backwards. Sarah’s neck was craned in agony, and her fingernails scratched at my hands to free herself. Blood spattered on the floor from my old wounds. I barked angrily and threw her along the hall. She went to her hands and knees, wheezing.
I stood over her, my arm ramrod straight as I aimed it at her. ‘You’re not leaving me like all the others did.’
She didn’t reply. She propelled herself along on her hands and knees until she gained the momentum to come to her feet. She headed directly for the back door, seeking escape through the yard. The door was locked and barred. She bounced off it, turned with her shoulders braced against the wood as she stared at me. I hadn’t moved.
She opened her mouth to speak, and I watched a bubble of snot pop in her right nostril. She retained enough dignity to swipe at her nose with her sleeve.
‘Ha!’ I said.
‘Jack, please. You have to stop this.’
‘So you keep on saying,’ I replied. ‘But it isn’t going to happen. Not until you see sense.’
‘Sense?’ she screeched. ‘Sense? It’s you who isn’t seeing sense.’
‘I see someone who has lied to me all along. I thought you liked me, Sarah. I thought you were my girlfriend. But I see now it was all an act. You were working with them to discredit me… you were working against me.’
‘No, Jack! Listen to yourself. Can you even hear what you sound like?’
‘Yeah, a psycho-loony,’ I replied. ‘But isn’t that what you wanted me to sound like. That’s why you brought in Steve and the others. You wanted to show I was fucking nuts. Is this so that Catriona gets full custody of the kids?’
Her head shook in desolation. I knew that I must be on to something.
‘You almost had me too,’ I went on. ‘You had me believing all that shite about ghosts. It was all trickery, wasn’t it? You were behind the noises and the voices.’ I thought about things for a moment. Yeah, the texts, the EVPs, the voices during the spirit box session: Sarah could have planted all of those. The noises I’d heard too; they could have been made via hidden speakers or something. The movement of items was harder to explain, but not impossible. ‘I must admit: I’ve no idea how you made me see Naomi. And those shadow figures: hell, that’s some magic trick you pulled there.’
‘What are you talking about? You think I set you up? How could I do all that? You’re wrong, Jack. You’re not thinking straight.’
Actually, I think it was the first time I’d thought clearly in a long time. ‘You wanted me to feed on my guilt. Was that it? You played on my guilt over killing Naomi?’
Sarah’s features folded in on themself. She wasn’t pretty when her face was scrunched up like a wadded rag. ‘You did kill her.’
So I’d admitted it. So what? I shrugged. ‘She was leaving me, threatening to kill herself. I just helped her on her way.’
‘Oh my God…’
‘And now you plan on leaving me.’
I shook my head slowly.
‘Talk about history repeating itself,’ I said calmly.
35
Professing my Love
A small part of me urged caution. It told me that I was acting irrationally, that everything I accused Sarah of was wrong, a figment of my paranoia and fucked up bi-polar disorder. How in God’s name could she be responsible for any of the odd events I’d borne witness too, half the time she hadn’t even been present. It warned me to stop, to allow Sarah to leave before things went too far again. But it was a distracted part of me, a third person voice that whispered from a far distance. A much larger portion of my psyche blustered and screamed, bolstering my madness, as it had the night that I’d smothered the life from my seriously injured girlfriend. That part of me was a raging monster by comparison, and it overwhelmed the voice of reason whispering to me from the darkest corner of my mind. Earlier that day the monster had tasted freedom when I’d punctured Mark’s tyres, drew the screwdriver over the paintwork of his car, and it wasn’t ready to go back in its box. Maybe it would never be ready again.
‘I want to show you something.’
I took Sarah by a wrist.
She squirmed, twisted her arm, but my grip was relentless.
‘Wh-where are you taking me?’
‘To show you something.’
I led her along the hall. Sarah was reluctant to follow. With her free hand she grabbed at the plyboard I’d set over the hole to the basement. It was too flimsy to offer any resistance, and was simply dragged along with her. Sarah released the board and it clattered to the floor – in the exact place it had fallen of it’s own volition that time. I studied it a moment, thinking, but then shook away the thought that had already germinated in my mind while holding shut the parlour door on her earlier. We made it to the foot of the stairs and I shoved Sarah ahead of me. ‘All the way to the top,’ I commanded.
‘Oh, God, Jack! What are you doing?’ Sarah attempted to push against me, digging in her heels on the bottom step. I pressed my groin against her backside, and immediately grew hard. You’d think I’d jabbed her with a cattle prod the way she jerked away.
‘Don’t you listen? I want to show you something.’
‘You’re not going to rape me…’
‘Is that a hint of longing I hear?’ I laughed at her squawk of dismay. ‘Don’t worry, Sarah. I’m not going to touch you. Unless that’s what you want? Is that what was wrong with you the other night, why I didn’t satisfy you: I wasn’t rough enough?’
Sarah moaned something, but I couldn’t make out her words. I laughed again. ‘Don’t worry. Despite what you think of me I’m no rapist.’
‘Just a murderer,’ she whispered.
I shoved her up the stairs.
Studiously avoiding making eye contact with the stained glass window and the faint pattern it cast on the landing wall, we bypassed the bathroom and I pressed Sarah along the hall to the entrance to the uppermost floor. Sarah again dug in at the doorway. She braced her hands against the jamb. ‘Go on,’ I warned her. ‘Almost there.’
‘Please let me go…’ Tears danced on her lashes.
She went up, and I followed.
In my pocket my mobile phone chirruped.
‘Go in my room,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘Just do it.’
I pushed her towards the walk-in wardrobe, and pulled open the doors.
‘Get inside.’ My phone was still ringing, the tone urgent.
‘No. Please, Jack, don’t make me go in there.’ Her eyes were huge. Terrified of the dark almost as much as she was of the consequences of refusing me.
‘Get inside. It won’t be for long.’
She opened her mouth to refuse, but I simply pressed a hand to her chest and shoved. She went backwards into the closet and banged up against the back wall. I shut the door, wedging my foot against it. I pulled out my phone. It still rang incessantly. Sarah hammered on the door. I banged my fist on the wood. ‘Shut up. Let me answer my damn phone.’
I hit the button.
‘Hello?’
‘Mr Newman? Jack?’
‘Yeah. Who is this?’
‘It’s Peter. Your landlord.’ I recognised the Geordie twang then.
‘Uh, hello, Mr Muir. How can I help?’
‘Are you at home?’
I was about to reply in the affirmative. Not a good idea. ‘No. I’m out. Is there a problem?’
‘Those screams again. I’ve had the staff from the insurance brokers on the phone saying all hell’s breaking loose in the house.’
I uttered a croak of disbelief. ‘I thought we’d cleared this up the last time? There were no screams then and there are no screams now.’
‘How can you be sure if you’re not in?’
‘They claimed the same the last time and it turned out to be nothing. It’s probably just kids in the back alley like the last time.’
‘Maybe…’ Muir wasn’t convinced. ‘But if you’re not home, I think I’d best call round and check. If nothing else I’ll need to do some damage control with your neighbours.’
Behind me Sarah hammered on the door. She hollered. I thumped the door to quieten her.
‘What was that?’ Muir demanded.
‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I’m in town. It was just some stupid kids running by.’
‘You’re in town?’
‘Aye.’
‘Maybe you should go back to the house; I’ll meet you there. Probably best if we cleared things up with your neighbours together.’
‘I can’t go home now.’
‘Mr Newman: I think you should.’
Sarah banged again and I knew Muir had heard her plaintive cries from the way he fell silent. Rather than offer another flimsy excuse, I said, ‘OK. I’ll head back now. Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be there. No need for you to go, I’ll speak with the insurance lot myself.’
‘Best-’
I hung up before he could say anything else. As I fed my phone into my pocket, I relaxed my guard. Sarah burst out of the closet, and I stumbled back, falling on my backside, my spine against my bed. History repeating. As she fled by, I shot out a hand and got a hold of her ankle. Sarah plunged headlong through the open door dragging me with her, and struck the door of the dumbwaiter cupboard hard. I clawed my way up her body, got my arms around her waist and forced her into the children’s room chest-to-chest as if we were engaged in an ungainly dance.
Inside the room I clasped my hands on her shoulders. Met her gaze. At least I stared into hers, because her pupils were jumping around, seeking escape from her predicament. ‘I told you I wanted to show you something.’ I held out a hand, indicating the wall. Where I’d worked with the spackling paste the wording was largely obliterated, hidden under the thick white paste. But there were areas where I’d been more liberal with the covering, and still words that were stark on the wall after I ran out of Polyfilla. ‘Think of it is my love letter to you,’ I encouraged her.
She’d seen them before, but her lips moved silently as she read the words. Then her chin dipped and fresh tears dripped off the end of her nose and made damp splotches on the new carpet.
‘You did this after all,’ she said.
‘Who else could it have been?’ I repeated her own words back to her from the first time she’d witnessed the writing. Those were probably my first sensible words in the past ten minutes or more. ‘If you ask me, that knock to the head when I fell down the stairs helped wake me up to the truth.’
‘I should have recognised your problem then,’ Sarah muttered. ‘I should have made you go to the hospital; they would have fixed it before it got out of hand.’
‘How’s it a problem? I love you. I want you, Sarah.’
She looked me in the eyes now, but I could see the fog of deceit pooling deep behind them like a miasma. ‘You still can have me. But not like this.’ She reached up and touched my face, her fingertips trembling. ‘We can start again, Jack. But first we have to stop this. We need to go to your doctor, OK?’
‘Promise?’ I asked.
‘I promise.’
She’d promised before and I’d told her exactly what I thought of her word. After conspiring with Catriona it wasn’t worth shit.
I sniffed in disdain.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘No can do, I’m afraid.’
Sarah stiffened, but she attempted her wily female charms again. She stroked my cheek. ‘Come on, Jack. You know this isn’t really you. You said you loved me. Well if you really love me you wouldn’t want to hurt me.’
‘That’s the thing,’ I said. ‘I do love you. But it’s because I love you that I can’t let you go. You’ll tell the police I admitted to killing Naomi-’
‘I won’t. It’ll be our secret.’
‘Sarah. Credit me with some brains. It’s one thing calling me insane, but don’t call me stupid.’
‘I promise-’
I held up a finger to stop her.
‘It’s because I love you so much that I can’t let you go. Don’t you get it, Sarah? I need you.’ I waved a hand at the words on the wall. ‘I want you. Nobody else can have you.’
Those words were the tipping point for both of us. I knew it. Sarah knew it. But she was first to respond. Her hand hadn’t moved far from my face as she’d gone through the charade of actually caring for me. She immediately hooked her fingers and drove her nails into the skin of my forehead and cheek. She made a fist, and the uppermost nails scoured me almost to the bone. Her thumbnail dug into my eye socket, and for the briefest moment I shrieked, expecting my eyeball to pop out, skewered on her nail like a cherry on a cocktail stick.
‘Bitch!’
Sarah slapped her way past me, her right hand catching me painfully across the side of my neck. Sparks exploded across my vision as I staggered. In reflex I snarled her hair in my fist, but she drove hard for the door, almost yanking my arm out of its socket. I was left with a few stray hairs jammed between my fingers. I went after her. I’d only taken about four steps and I was on the small landing outside the dumbwaiter cupboard. There I paused, listening as Sarah scrambled down the stairs. Illogically I stood there, peering into my bedroom and was positive I could make out a pale shimmer of light in the form of a human being. I looked left, right, took a step closer to the translucent image of myself, but then I realised that Sarah was almost to the bottom of the stairs and lurched after her. I skidded down the flight of stairs, my shoulders rubbing flakes of paint from the walls, my heels bumping off each riser. The door at the bottom was wide open, Sarah rushing along the landing. Again I paused for the briefest time to glance up the stairs. That same shimmering glow of light peeked around the doorjamb above me – and I knew that my suspicions concerning the secret of the shadow man were true.
It was a profound moment, but it was engulfed by panic. I couldn’t allow Sarah to escape. I needed to put things right and if she ran out into the blizzard screaming that a maniac was after her then I’d be finished. I raced after her, ignoring the flashing pain in my knee at every step.
Sarah was running so
fast that she overshot the top stair of the half-landing. She went down the short flight of stairs and crashed into the wall next to the bathroom door – exactly where I’d taken my tumble that time. The difference here was that I’d fallen backwards, but Sarah had flown headlong. Her forehead smacked the wall and she sunk to her knees groaning, her hands flat against the wall above her head. Seeing her hurt like that gave me pause. I stood on the top step, my hands pulling at my shirt as I thought about what my actions had led to. Above her something moved.
My attention jerked to the stained glass window. I didn’t want to look, but the impulse was overwhelming. Features formed in the crimson glass, the battered and torn face of Naomi; the way it had looked after I crawled across that garden and found her on the verge of death. She gave me that same look: one of intense hatred.
‘Screw you, Naomi!’ I screamed at her, while pointing at Sarah. ‘This is your fault! You drove me to this, you bitch!’
Naomi screamed back at me in complete and utter loathing.
The window imploded, raining shards of glass down on me. I threw my arms protectively over my head. Chunks of Victorian glass pattered on my arms and shoulders, some jagged splinters digging in. Other shards fell around my feet, reminiscent of the bloody glass scattered on the lawn where Naomi had died. It was a sign, I’m sure, but it didn’t matter; I went down the stairs, walking on the crimson glass before the last of the splinters hit the floor. I grabbed Sarah, hauled her semi-conscious form through the bathroom door. Behind us the settling glass was joined by a flurry of snowflakes as the blizzard found ingress to my home.
Sarah was dazed, but her instinct for survival was still strong. She struck out with her elbow, catching me in the throat. I gagged, clawed at my windpipe. I almost collapsed, but Sarah tried to get past me to the open door, and her body held me upright. I yelled at her, gave her a shove with my forearms and she went over the rim of the tub.
Unlike the last time Sarah was in my bath, the tub was empty and she was fully clothed. But apparently I wasn’t the only one who’d experienced prophetic visions. When I’d hauled her dripping and covered in suds from the bath - fearful that she’d drowned - she told me that she dreamed I was holding her down by the throat. Maybe that’s why I leaned in, sunk my thumbs either side of her windpipe and began to throttle the life out of her. ‘You’re never going to leave me,’ I told her through gritted teeth as I squeezed as hard as I could. ‘Never. I want you, I want you...to just die.’